Disputed agreement
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Jeremy Hawker wrote:
Where it says, at the bottom, Comments are closed, shouldn't that be Comments IS closed?
It's the category "Comments" that is closed, and there is only one.
I'm not sure, myself — but I can guarantee that if it said "Comments is closed", some people would complain about that choice too. I pointed this out to Jeremy, who suggested a punctuational solution: "Comments" is closed. But that one would run afoul of Evan "Funk" Davies at The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks (or whoever has taken over that franchise).
Appealing to norma loquendi (blogandi?), I see that {"comments are closed"} gets 10.9 million Google hits, whereas {"comments is closed"} gets only 1,030.
Anyhow, comments is open.
Theodore said,
April 22, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Why not "Comments section is closed", or better yet, when the comments are disallowed, don't display anything!
Bruce said,
April 22, 2008 @ 11:48 am
Or "Commenting is closed."
Licia Corbolante said,
April 22, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
What about a colon?
Comments: closed
It's a solution often used in localization for languages with inflection where placeholders are used and a potential lack of gender/number agreement might result. What precedes the colon gets perceived as a proper noun (e.g. label of a UI item), which makes the lack of agreement less grating.
John Cowan said,
April 22, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
I propose "Comments are not wanted. Go post on your own blog."
Jay said,
April 22, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
I prefer:
"The ability to post a comment in this section has been disabled by the powers that be to ensure the cleanliness and safety of this webpage."
Much more concise, don't you think?
Steven said,
April 22, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Would Mr. Hakwer find the following examples acceptable, then?
Registrations is closed.
Comments is welcome.
Searches is disallowed.
Solicitors is not wanted.
I'm no linguist; does the word category in this context have a meaning different than its everyday one? If not, I could do this all day…
Andy Hollandbeck said,
April 22, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
Whichever you choose, "Comments" should get a heavy metal umlaut over the "o".
If you can customize it, why stick with plain-vanilla "Comments" at all? People could leave Remarks, Gripes, Observations, Assertions, or even Obiter Dicta.
All right. I'm putting my thesaurus away now.
Kawaiirrhea said,
April 22, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Or how about
"Every limit point of comment is a point of comment"?
:-p
Monica said,
April 22, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
Commenting is closed.
No more comments, please.
(Nothing — don't talk about it at all.)
Jeremy Hawker said,
April 22, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
"Comments are closed" only gets a million and a half, Mark, not 10.9 million.
[Sorry, this search still gets 10.9 million for me. If you only get a million and a half, your search must be limited to a much smaller slice of the web. What's the URL for your search? Not that such counts are really trustworthy, anyhow. (myl)]
You said somewhere that comments tend to go completely off topic, so how about:
"Comments" (you be the judge) is closed.
Jonathon said,
April 22, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
I find "Comments is closed" to be ungrammatical or at the very least stylistically offensive. "'Comments' is closed" is even worse, stylistically speaking. I've never found anything wrong with "Comments are closed," but I suppose it doesn't make sense if you think about it literally; it's not the comments that are closed (because there aren't any comments), but the commenting, as Bruce said.
cim said,
April 22, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
I think the phrases I see most frequently are "Commenting is turned off," "Comments are turned off," and "Comments are disallowed on this post".
[Those get 15k, 110k, and 813k, respectively. And the last two have exactly the same subject-verb-agreement properties as "Comments are closed" — don't they? (myl)]
Kawaiirrhea said,
April 22, 2008 @ 3:03 pm
In response to Steven, I think the issue is that the comments individually are not closed (what would that even mean?), but that the section titled "Comments" is closed (to further comments). The second to fourth of your examples have expected interpretations regarding the respective items individually: each comment is welcome, each search is disallowed, each solicitor is not wanted. But "each comment is closed" makes no sense.
Your "Registrations is closed" example is analogous to "Comments is closed", but it may be the case that an event of multiple registrations is less frequently referred to as "Registrations" than a section of multiple comments is referred to as "Comments".
Steve in Spain said,
April 22, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Why not simply "Comments closed" (following the model of "Smoking prohibited")? No need to gore yourself on either horn of the is/are conundrum.
Or better yet: "Comments disabled," which strikes me a tad more accurate.
Peter Howard said,
April 22, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
My results agree with Jeremy's. "comments are closed" (with quotes) gets 1.58 million. Without quotes it gets 10.6 million. (google.com, from UK, 20:40 UCT-ish, fwiw)
Rubrick said,
April 22, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
I predict that this debate will rage until the Beatles is no longer popular.
Rick S said,
April 22, 2008 @ 5:21 pm
Language Hat's high signal-to-noise ratio remains unchallenged so far. sigh
sharon said,
April 22, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
I clicked on the links and got 1,570,000 and 1020 respectively. (And the top hit on the latter one… is this post. I'm frequently amazed at just how quickly Google updates these days – it used to take days at least, and that was when the internet was much smaller…) The only difference I can see is that in my browser Google has added the text "%20rel=" at the end of the URL. No idea what that means.
Before we all get diverted by other things, I want to just say how brilliant I think it is that you've decided to open up comments here. I've been reading Language Log for a while and love it but I've often been frustrated by that particular absence. Thank you thank you thank you!
Mark Liberman said,
April 22, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
Language Hat’s high signal-to-noise ratio remains unchallenged so far. sigh
This is not a very good test case, just because the content of my original post was so minimal. In contrast, take a look at the comments on Bill Poser's Two Dots Too Many post, which all make a significant contribution, in proportion to the significant content Bill provided to start with.
Mark Liberman said,
April 22, 2008 @ 6:20 pm
As for the people who are getting ~ 1M for a Google search on "comments are closed", this must be UK vs. US thing, somehow. Here's a screen shot of what I got a couple of minutes ago:
gribley said,
April 22, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
I know this is no longer a linguistics issue, but I am puzzled. Apparently Mark has access to a super-duper google that the rest of us don't. I get 1.6 million, whether or not I'm logged into my google account. hmmm, there's no "preview" here so I will just find out whether my screen shot comes through the hard way.
In any case, I am very pleased to see comments on LL. Although I worry that this will mean a great deal more time reading blogs…
Josh Millard said,
April 22, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
It's kind of a relief to see that I'm not the only one thinking about this. I'd love to know if the WordPress team gave the phrasing here any significant thought; the sort of passive influence that the 2.5 release has had on the world is in this small respect borders on the hefty.
Language Hat’s high signal-to-noise ratio remains unchallenged so far. sigh
Ah, well, as Mark suggested: light-hearted, chatty subjects are likely to bring on light-hearted chat. Also, there's a matter of pent-up LLog commenting glee to consider; a month of open comments and we'll have a better picture of what the conversation around here is like.
Josh Millard said,
April 22, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Also, it's counterintuitive to me to not see a "comments" link (whatever the phrasing) on the front page at the foot of those posts for which comments are open; is that an intentional choice, or just a symptom of the on-going tweaking of the site?
Mark Liberman said,
April 22, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
It's a symptom of the on-going tweaking of the site.
Jeremy said,
April 22, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
Most of the Google "is" examples seem to be of the form: "the time for public comments is closed", which doesn't count. Anyway, I'm only getting one tenth of the Americans' hits, so I'm cancelling my subscription to Google.
"Comments closed" would be the best way to avoid the problem, but I'm still wondering why it's there.
Pablo said,
April 23, 2008 @ 4:11 am
How come no one has suggested using italics yet?: "Comments is closed."
outeast said,
April 23, 2008 @ 4:17 am
Wonderful! A deep and meaningful discussion to which I can contibute!
I only get 1.5m ghits for "comments are closed", as others have above; however, I only get 1,010 for "comments is closed" (with this post at the top of the list) so Mark's hit ratio remains unchallenged.
Oskar said,
April 23, 2008 @ 5:17 am
You could go with a little bit of the classics:
"To comment, or not to comment, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous flames
Or to take arms against a sea of arguments,
And by opposing, end them. "
or (a real latin translation would be appriciated)
"Comments delenda est!"
or, my favorite
"Comments? We don't need no stinking comments!"
Stephan said,
April 23, 2008 @ 8:05 am
I did a Google search and got 1,520,000 hits just like the other commenters — but I noticed that in Mark's screenshot it says: Results 1 -10 of about 10,400,000 for "comments are closed" whereas I just get …."comments are closed" (no links for the words comments and closed
language hat said,
April 23, 2008 @ 9:06 am
I get 2,420,000 for "comments are closed" (with links for comments and closed), and I'm in the US. I envy Mark's SuperGoogle access.
Jamie said,
April 23, 2008 @ 9:12 am
I just tried the Google search for "comments are closed" (I clicked on Mark's link), and got 1,550,000 results, with links for the words 'comments' and 'closed'.
For those testing the geographical hypothesis, I'm in Alexandria, VA, USA.
DonBoy said,
April 23, 2008 @ 10:31 am
Meanwhile, "Filed…under Uncategorized" gives me a cheap laugh.
Steven said,
April 23, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
Thanks for the clarification, kawaii. I think I understand it now.
It would also appear we have two Steves reading from Spain…
Eli said,
April 24, 2008 @ 12:11 am
I got 10,900,000 hits for "comments are closed". Apparently 500,000 more people since the original search have used "are" as the copula. I'm in Canada.
John Cowan said,
April 24, 2008 @ 2:20 am
As all LLog readers know perfectly well, the Google count is not particularly accurate.
Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on search, and I know little about it that is not public knowledge.
Rob said,
October 12, 2010 @ 8:12 pm
I have been told to search for comments closed. You all have taken me to another level. :-)
Suzi said,
October 7, 2014 @ 2:42 am
Surely comments are plural therefore the correct English should be "are". Unless it is the comments section which is singular then it should be "is"